Wednesday, November 04, 2009

With today's 800 Microsoft layoffs, Microsoft Layoff 2009 has reached its final milestone and shipped, exceeded expectations of 5,000 with 5,800 reduced positions.

Err... yay?

Last week during the Town Hall Mr. Ballmer confirmed there would be one more iteration on the layoffs. And after that? Who knows. More to come? Maybe. Booga booga!

You know, we have people working for Microsoft (or, at least did, I don't know, maybe no longer) responsible for driving executive leadership education and growth at Microsoft. This is their friggin' job. Develop Microsoft Leadership at the executive and L68+ levels. So, has anyone hemmed and hawed in-front of Mr. Ballmer and mentioned that this nickel and diming layoff approach is at the worst case end of the layoff management scale?

The looming threat of continuing RIFs and layoffs indicates that Microsoft is just too big for its leadership. It is beyond their capabilities to wrap their minds around everything Microsoft is doing. It has gotten away from them. What needs to go? Hell, I don't know even what all these people do, and you want to decide who stays and goes?

Yes.

Cut deep. Cut once. Get on with it and say, "We're done. We have aligned our company to be efficient and effective within this new global economic climate and are ready to focus on returning to profits and market share growth."

Coverage from the inside? No email. Quiet. Quite dysfunctional. There was something linked off of the MSW site and it also had a FAQ document that had to be one of the worse FAQs I've ever read. There is an "A" portion to an FAQ and in this case some of the questions were great but the answers looked like they were generated from some sort of English obfuscation Perl script 3rd place prize winner.

So, I'm going through about sixty comments now on the older post. I think it was necessary for Microsoft to have layoffs due to the mismanaged growth and lack of focus and direction our Senior Leadership Team has given us. But it should have been twice as much, done all at once. Now we dither.

Were you affected by the layoff or know someone who was? I'd be interested in knowing which groups and organizations are affected.

911 comments:

What I *REALLY* want to hear is if the axe was swinging at The Bravern (MSN). We've done the deal with Yahoo. Let THEM do the content and let us focus on Bing. That incestuous group is one of the worst run I've ever seen (I worked there in the early 00's) They just keep shuffling bad executives around (hello Yusif) and have the lowest performers across the company working there.

I would welcome Balmer if he would freeze all the external hiring. They could just meet the demand of positions in other groups by hiring the internal laid off people. Some groups like Search are still hiring.

I would welcome Balmer if he would freeze all the external hiring. They could just meet the demand of positions in other groups by hiring the internal laid off people. Some groups like Search are still hiring.

-- most mature companies allow "rotation" of people .. called a POOL system to help balance open reqs.

most mature companies allow "rotation" of people .. called a POOL system to help balance open reqs.

Actually some managers in microsoft love this hire and fire game. They fire the people whom they do not like( in certain cases those people were doing very good job). And later they tell the upper management that they are going to hire some talents from the current external markets. And again we know that microsoft recruiting process lacks some quality. In fact some hiring is based on the networking with the hiring manager instead of technical expertise.

most mature companies allow "rotation" of people .. called a POOL system to help balance open reqs.

Actually some managers in microsoft love this hire and fire game. They fire the people whom they do not like( in certain cases those people were doing very good job). And later they tell the upper management that they are going to hire some talents from the current external markets. And again we know that microsoft recruiting process lacks some quality. In fact some hiring is based on the networking with the hiring manager instead of technical expertise.--

totally agree, i was not saying ms was a mature company, in fact quite the opposite.

I look at Don Dodge's web log today http://dondodge.typepad.com/the_next_big_thing/and wonder if there is a message here.

I believe Microsoft should be letting go is brightest and most courageous and do a service to the industry, if only to allow for a new direction and help provide the next few decades of excellence in software.

The need of the Software Giant now and for some time in the past, is to align all its Divisions, Groups, Teams and Individuals towards corporate goals, to provide a ecosystem to pull in customers and partners towards the software and services it provides.This is the same effect as the solenoid (loop of wire wrapped around a metallic core which produces a magnetic field when electric current is passed - due to realignment of the molecules in the core). This has resulted in very intelligent and capable people spending time in trivial pursuits and dealing with meetings and politics within the corporation.

Now if only these brightest and courageous out there own their own or in smaller more agile companies.

some examples from history:

William Shockley left Bell Labs in a disagreement over the handling of the invention of the transistor. After returning to California Institute of Technology for a short while, Shockley moved to Mountain View, California in 1956, and founded Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory.Shockley intended to replace the current transistor with a new three-element design (today known as the Shockley diode), but the design was considerably more difficult to build than the "simple" transistor. In 1957, Shockley decided to end research on the silicon transistor. As a result, eight engineers left the company to form Fairchild Semiconductor. Two of the original employees of Fairchild Semiconductor, Robert Noyce and Gordon Moore, would go on to find Intel.

so just curious to know were there any announcement from the VPs about these layoff? I heard steve did not send any such email. He probably thinks layoff is a continous process in microsoft like development of other products. So it is better not to spend his valuable time by paying attention to this matter.

Problems in MSD when you have C and D types at the top (some Bs) and A and some Bs underneath. God forbig you have good ideas and want to grow its a shark tank and teaming occurs and A and Bs go away. There isalot just around the politics of the MS culture which yield poorly for all.

I thought SCOLive can be really worthy. After watching, talking to people working on it and involved as an external partner for the last 2.5 years, I came to the realization that the dysfunction and the territorialism (around points on types) came into play hard. Too many cooks to make basic decisions, too much disruption to get things done, boundaries of authority were getting violated (... stakeholders thought they were owners/decision makers and complained when they werent' etc).

So some of the A and Bs were axed and Cs and Ds got promoted to principle. Sad leadership only cares about tenure at MS vs. merit.

It looks like the media reaction was very muted this time around. Add the bump to the stock price and management has every reason to make those layoffs a regular and permanent fixture of life at MSFT.

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The january and may was BIG RELEASE of the new product LAYOFF 1.0 and LAYOFF 2.0. The subsequent layoffs will be just a patch. He he you know all of our products need bug fixes and patches. so no need to involve higher management to write an e-mail to wider audiences.

The problem for AlexGo is that he is neither technical nor savvy. However, he thinks he is smarter than most people around him and he didn't want any help from people around him. Now as CTO he can indeed claim he is the smartest people in OSD.

Went to Alexgo's office hour once to talk about poor leadership, release management and quality of the product(I was from Windows and did not like what I saw when I moved to adCenter). He dismissed them as non-issues, and were pretty happy about what was going on at the time... He was either fooled by people around him or he is too dumb to see them. Never felt inspired by him or any other leaders in adCenter...

In my org, only job shares were let go. Finance changed how they were allocated so instead of two part-time people sharing a head, they split it into two heads. Completely removed the incentive for job shares without telling the affected employees, which are also disproportionally senior women with families. Go, Microsoft, keep those senior women leaving in droves!

Regarding AlexGo, I had the pleasure of knowing him briefly in my earlier days and I thought he was a very strong, competent, developer. He was responsible for work on COM and the rich text control. However as he moved up through the ranks it seemed as if he was being promoted outside of his area of expertise and he always seemed uncomfortable in an increasing array of senior roles.

The worst part of promoting engineers is that as they lose contact with their technical peers and move away from being individual contributors, they continue to have influence on the product but either become increasingly reliant on their reports to control the product quality or, for those whose ego won't allow them to do that, they try to jump in and control the quality without being directly hands on with disastrous results.

We need to eliminate development manager and partner engineer roles, all of which are principally management (directly or indirectly) and focus on technical development leads being promoted to chief software engineer roles where they both contribute to and control the code and are ultimately accountable for the quality. This model works extremely well in the open source world.

It would be instructive to think about people at Microsoft who went into development manager and now moved back to SDE lead. It happens a lot more often than you think and for a good reason.

Agree with the first poster about MSN. I was there too and talk about dead wood! So many people that have just lingered there because they cannot work anywhere else. Have not heard about cuts, tho, unfortunately.

Based on the way the layoffs were handled today, it's clear that the Microsoft SLT no longer feels obligated to even attempt transparency or empathy.

Once upon a time, management at least least went through the motions of telling employees that they were an important resource. Ha! Now, they're only useful until the current release gets out the door, unless they've curried favor with the right folks.

I feel like most of us are stamped with an expiration date now. In some cases, the faster you reach your goals, the quicker you can be put into the "kim" bucket.

The economy has made it easier than ever for SLT to think of senior (and more expensive) employees as expendable, only to be replaced by eager-eyed cheaper new hires. This attitute does not help people or teams achieve success, not to mention the mental toll of doing the increasingly intricate MYCD and August review dances. Never mind that for some orgs, stack ranking comes before people turn in their reviews.

It bugs me that SLT was so clueless about the advice of some economic analysts and hired willy-nilly over the past few years. In the Puget Sound, it added fuel to the rising housing prices, overcrowded schools, and screwed up local traffic.

Now, some people's livelihoods are derailed, and everyone (with a soul) is mentally impacted as they think about their laid-off colleagues. The guidance for SLT for the future is: "anticipate, anticipate, anticipate!"

I heard of some people bumped in Health Solutions and Public Sector. The irony is that they kept a 20+ year veteran GM who was a cancer in Health Solutions. Friends tell me he had a 40 OHI before they finally put him in a "new sales role." This is why Google will win. That guy could have saved us millions.

I heard of some people bumped in Health Solutions and Public Sector. The irony is that they kept a 20+ year veteran GM who was a cancer in Health Solutions. Friends tell me he had a 40 OHI before they finally put him in a "new sales role." This is why Google will win. That guy could have saved us millions.

===Classic, we ended up getting the 15+year veteran who was a GM in CE .. came to us (amazon) working on kindle devices, useless.

Anonymous said...The dial business used to make $1 billion in revenue before management started thinking they don't want the money. Now it is making sloppy silver-light toolbar that it ships with Sun Java download :)

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LMAO, is this pre-corrigan ?

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Yep .. when TedK was GM when ..MSN high tailed out of BroadBand Internet

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yah. did you like what corrigan/howe did for that mcdonalds wireless efforts :) what a classic move that was.

It bugs me that SLT was so clueless about the advice of some economic analysts and hired willy-nilly over the past few years. In the Puget Sound, it added fuel to the rising housing prices, overcrowded schools, and screwed up local traffic.

Hiring bar was pretty low for the last few years. Since all the orgs, hiring managers would hire independently there were lots of corruptions. At certain cases favors from hiring manager played crucial role than technical expertise. Lots of unqualified people were hired way above their level. And in some orgs promotion velocity was too high because they were hiring entry level engineers very craziliy so they needed to promote 2/3 years old employees as a manager. Search is one such organization.

I have yet to see an org that does NOT stack rank before IC reviews are turned in. Hell, the damn tool isn't even ready before stack ranks are performed.

If your manager has 1/10 a clue (and yes, I realize that many don't), they know what you've done throughout the year long before you write your review (and even if they don't, then you're as much to blame as they are).

Reviews are written for your future managers (wow - that was a very HR-ish statement - sorry). Your calibration should NOT be based on what you write in your review, it should be based on a year's worth of work that both you and your manager are aware of accomplishing.

Your calibration should NOT be based on what you write in your review, it should be based on a year's worth of work that both you and your manager are aware of accomplishing.

Operative term: "should". In my experience, in very busy orgs, even the most diligent manager/direct pair forgets SOMETHING that the direct did, until it's seen on the Cliff's Notes version of the year in review (aka, the employee self-evaluation).

Case in point: Although my manager saw report after report after report after report listing me as responsible for project X throughout the year, she still claimed in writing at review time that I had NOT in fact been responsible for project X based on a faulty summary SHE had made of my accomplishments.

Ideally, managers "should" use the employee's self-evaluation as a verification of their understanding of what the employee has achieved.

And heya, managers, if an employee says something on their self-eval that you think is inaccurate, save yourself embarrassment by discussing it with them and getting the story straight BEFORE you question their accuracy in the manager comments section of the review.

Mini... who'da... thank you so much for the effort, it would have been nice if this blog had been influential enough to get Microsoft back on the right track, but I feel bad for you. After years and years of blogging, senior management is still as dumb as ever and the company is still a rocket ship accelerating towards the ground.

You're obviously a talented person and it's time to pull the rip cord for your own sanity. I'm glad you jumped on board with the rest of the human race and bought an iPhone. Now you just have to finish the job and quit. We're all waiting for you on the outside.

During the Give campaign I received at least a dozen reminders from people at various levels of middle management in the district, region or US level, all with some variation of manager, general manager, or VP in their title. It really struck me as our consultants are struggling to find engagements to stay busy (and avoid the axe or get dumped into that bottom bucket during annaul review because they weren't utilized) that we have entirely too much management, and it is focused on the wrong priorities.

I'm one of the 800. 14 years on the job. Got a call on my cell to inform me of this (job eliminated because they were consolidating locations and was not about job performance). Got to my hotel room and found my network access was already cut off. Meaning the exit package they EMAILED me was not able to be downloaded or read.

Exciting times. I fear for the customers of what had been my product for all of these 14 years.

"She was also responsible for the "Pink" codename, which has a lamer backstory than anyone has guessed: she was listening to a song by Pink (the singer) when she decided she was just the person to go one-up the Sidekick.

I heard second-hand that a consulting firm was brought in to direct how this round of layoffs went down. It was per their instructions that there was no 6AM e-mail this time around, less internal communication, and etc.

The dial business is MSN Internet Access, or narrow-band internet access. It is highly profitable on a per-customer basis. From 1995 to around 2005 or so we had millions of paying customers creating a billion dollar business for Microsoft.

For many years it was the sole moneymaker of MSN. However, with the rise of broadband the narrow-band market naturally saw its sunset. The product still exists interestingly enough. There are are still a good number of people who either refuse to use broadband or live in an area where they have no other choice. I worked on the team for about half of my career at Microsoft.

Because of the reduced customer base the team was redirected to other parts of the company. I believe that most of them work on the MSN Toolbar now, which is separate from the Windows Live Toolbar.

Yep .. when TedK was GMwhen ..MSN high tailed out of BroadBand Internet

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yah. did you like what corrigan/howe did for that mcdonalds wireless efforts :) what a classic move that was.

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I'm fairly certain that that wasn't done by them. It may have been on the plate but wasn't touched until they left for voice. That genius project was implemented by Burroughs. In the end they didn't even ship it.

Corrigan was the only GM who actually knew how to run the business and give people features that they wanted.

Before Corrigan we had TedK. He was the genius who decided to pay everyone $400 at Best Buy in the late 90s if they agreed to a 2 year subscription to MSN Internet Access. Of course after two years people canceled and we lost all that money! He then forced us to implement a Qwest broadband piece-of-crap that no customers wanted (the exact same DSL solution Qwest was offering but for more money than Qwest!). Our support costs went through the roof. Any profitability went away. People were very happy when TedK moved over to Sever and Tools.

Corrigan got our engineering practices back in line, reduced support cost, and improved customer sat numbers. Not sure what beef people have against him. Besides, he left IA almost five years ago. Are you mad you got a 3.0 under him or something?

Heard many heads rolled in CSD. Good choice. screwed up leadership - Top heavy fat. These guys have not shipped anything - modeling, .net services etc in inclubation for many years. complete lack of execution

The management has taken a very productive communication approach with this layoff round. There will be no internal announcement.If you want to be sure you're safe, just wait for a few days. If you haven't received anything from HR by that time, then most probably you're OK ... for now, at least.So, should you worry about the layoffs? No, absolutely not! Relax and continue working. If HR wants to tell you something, they'll send you a meeting request, until that time this is not an issue for you.What, you're still worried? OK, I'll have HR take care of you ...

I'm just waiting for the losers working on the next MS flop, Project Natal, to be let go in the next round...lot of dead weight in this group (e.g., Kudot drove EA Chicago into the ground only to get hired here by Don Mattrick).

To clarify about the MSL layoffs (My group) - some of the people affected may have been because of the O'Reilly deal, but NONE of the people that got laid off in my larger group had anything to do with that.

My team keeps getting smaller in the states and larger and larger in China, in more and more cases, only the lead is in Redmond. Quote: "Don't worry - these are REAL Microsoft FTEs! They will only be doing dev and test support work - no original work." Yeah, that lasted a year. And, yes, they are "real" FTEs, but they cost a fraction of a European or USA worker.Not to personally knock the people that I have met that have come from China regularly, they are quite nice and eager, but to knock Microsoft for having really become a two-faced standard giant corporation that says one thing and does another.

I believe when Steve was last seen driving out of Medina, possibly en route from the Gold Coast, it appeared he was driving a Black Landrover, with thicker glass windows - I guess w/o speakerphone capabilities, as it appeared he was driving and holding a phone up to his ear, (A violation of WA State laws?) I could not tell if he was just testing his new iPhone.

I heard second-hand that a consulting firm was brought in to direct how this round of layoffs went down. It was per their instructions that there was no 6AM e-mail this time around, less internal communication, and etc.

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Good to know that all our Senior HR Managers did not have to do some real work... using a consultant frees them up to lunch a little longer.

The no email/communication from Ballmer/Brummel is another good example of the terrible leadership this company has.Even if is the 3rd round of layoffs, this is still a pretty exceptional event affecting 800 MS families worldwide, plus there is a "good story" to be told to the remaining employees: the layoff rounds are complete. Now go and focus on your job and stop looking around wondering if you are next.But Ballmer, of course, is missing this opportunity to show (or pretend) he cares and to focus the remaining work force on the road ahead. Another opportunity missed. Another example of terrible leadership. How bad can he get? Go on Steve, there's no much runway left for complete incompetency, you are almost there!

As one of those let go in January, I wish each of the 800 in this round the best of luck in finding work in this tough economy.

There is life after Microsoft. Some go back into the company. Some become itinerant workers, at MS or elsewhere. Some go to competitors and with renewed fervor try to beat Microsoft's brains in. Some go to other jobs, other professions. Some get bitter, and some get on with it.

Mostly, Microsoft hired good people, and most of the 800 are in that bucket. So don't get bitter, don't get down on yourself. Be a survivor. Get on with it.

Landing a new gig may take a while. If you can afford it, take some time to decompress.

And in the immortal words of Miracle Max, remember: "There's a big difference between mostly dead, and all dead. Now, mostly dead: he's slightly alive." You're slightly alive, and already on the way to healing. Now have fun storming the castle.

>>What I *REALLY* want to hear is if the axe was swinging at The Bravern (MSN). We've done the deal with Yahoo. Let THEM do the content and let us focus on Bing. That incestuous group is one of the worst run I've ever seen (I worked there in the early 00's) They just keep shuffling bad executives around (hello Yusif) and have the lowest performers across the company working there.

Pretty much everyone in engineering above L3 (with a few exceptions) within MSN / Bing could be axed and it would be a net positive for Microsoft. There is a fair amount of deadwood in L3 engineering and below but a lot of talented people as well. Likewise there are a lot of good people on the content & publishing side who are shackled by the lack of vision at L1 and higher.

The biggest problem within MSN / OSD is that senior leadership can't pick a strategy and stick to it - it's a total waffle-fest.

To the people who complain that stack ranking is done before you even turn in yopur self assessment: you do not understand the true nature of the review.It is akin to the self-critiques people had to write in the old communist regimes. The goal is to get you to write things about yourself that'll later be used against you if necessary. And you won't have a leg to stand on since those are YOUR words.Now, like any tool the review can be subverted to achieve goals other than the one its creators had in mind. It's hacking 101.The review is the best medium you have to send messages up the management chain. If your boss likes to control the image s/he projects upwards, this is your chance to shed a light on some inconvenient truths that his/her managers might not be fully aware of.Don't be blatant about it. If you have to write about a project that didn't go very well, in the middle of the usual self beating, add a sentence or two about how management's indecision didn't help anything.

I did that once at a time when I was in a delicate spot career-wise. Within an hour of sending my review to my manager I had him and HIS manager stopping by, making sure "everything is OK". You bet it was OK! Those two had gotten the message.

Even if is the 3rd round of layoffs, this is still a pretty exceptional event affecting 800 MS families worldwide, plus there is a "good story" to be told to the remaining employees: the layoff rounds are complete.

What makes you think the layoffs are over? Seems to me if they went to the trouble of bringing in consultants, they're looking to establish some process.

In my case, I'm bitter as hell -- worked my ass off for years, was promoted several times and never had a bad review before I was given my pink slip -- but I've also gotten on with it. New city. New job. New "normal."

I expect there are a lot of other bitter-but-gotten-on-regardlesses out there, and I'd put money on a good many of them sharing that fervor to take down Microsoft.

I heard second-hand that a consulting firm was brought in to direct how this round of layoffs went down.Microsoft is feeling more and more like the movie "Office Space" every day. Now, um yeah, get back to your TSP reports, and we're going to need you to work this weekend.

Oh, cut MSN some slack -- they are finally showing some signs of life. If they can keep from reorging again, they might be able to keep some stability and make forward progress. They are at least starting to pay attention to design, which is refreshing.

Worked for that joker when he was in MBD (ca 2001-2003). My impression of him was that he was a complete no-op, but incredibly political and slippery. The kind of guy who mastered the art of passing blame like few of us ever will.

We lost a few people yesterday. I don't know how they were all picked, but for one I worked with closely I KNOW she had ssues and hadn't added value for ages. If it wasn't for the layoff I would have expected a manage out situation.

We've seen more firings recently and from what I've seen- they're firing the right people. I'm still of the belief that more people SHOULD go, but I'd like to see more cuts from bad managers- seems like it's always staff.

Those talking about the 27 let go and posted on WARN was different than the 800 this time. The 27 were notified back on 9/3/2009. Since the state requires two months notice they have severance for two months but are not actually working during that time. The 800 or ~200 Campus this time have not been posted on WARN yet.

WARN site:http://www.esd.wa.gov/newsandinformation/warn/index.php

Things are still pretty quiet around here today. I wonder if the notifications are staged over a few days or if everyone that could be reached was notified yesterday?

I would like to reply to the person that wrote that they are sure "vendors are stealing money from MS". I have been a vendor for almost 15 years, working for various companies. I know I am a very dedicated and ethical person and so have the companies I have worked for. We work very hard to be good stewards of Microsoft's budgets and good partners. I invite you to rethink that statement.

We've seen more firings recently and from what I've seen- they're firing the right people. I'm still of the belief that more people SHOULD go, but I'd like to see more cuts from bad managers- seems like it's always staff.

I'd like to see more cuts from bad managers- seems like it's always staff.

==agreed, I will provide atleast 1 to that pool

I'll see your 1, and raise it by one additional toxic manager, for a total of two that I add to the pool from my old management chain.

Now if you want to include just plain ineffective managers, rather than the actively damaging ones, there are another half dozen in my former area of the company who would be candidates. They fall into the "not particularly helpful but at least not a hindrance to morale or work getting done" category.

can someone confirm? If this is the case, then I am bailing now for Google or somewhere else. (i'm a top 20% but god knows what bullshit could happen and I'm not sticking around to find out if I'm lucky.)

Now several rounds of layoffs, takes good and bad ICs but very few bad managers. Likewise with reviews and manage outs.

If this blog has really become the uncensored (mostly) voice of current and formers softies, then why not call out those managers here?

I see call outs for senior folks, but not first line managers. In my experience, first and second line managers are where there is the most widespread rot and maligancy (Sp?).

If you want to blame SLT for lack of strategy and execution, then much of this falls back on lower levels - as they should be providing visibility into market, customers, and projects and own execution at opportunity/product/release level.

Yes, SLT should be accountable for hiring and managing of these managers.

However, this doesn't excuse front line management's behavior - Just as your "responsibility" to manage up doesn't obsolve them of wrong doing.

Worked for that joker when he was in MBD (ca 2001-2003). My impression of him was that he was a complete no-op, but incredibly political and slippery. The kind of guy who mastered the art of passing blame like few of us ever will.

Frankly, if I was running the co, he'd not last 15 seconds.

I see one great quality of satyan. He has a great love for his home country. you will see most of the top development manager in his org are from India. No wonder why does Search suck so much.

you will see most of the top development manager in his org are from India.

I agree some of the Indian people at microsoft are great and talented. But most of them are just crappy big liar like satya. They fit very well in this political environment. When an Indian manager hires another microsoftie he is most likely to be another Indian.

This year was about promoting minorities and women .. so you will be double dipped to see an asian/indian women in charge :)

Do you think indians are minority in Microsoft? Huh it is the biggest joke. Some years back I had seen a forum post in Orkut Microsoft community where many indian employees were criticizing microsoft. Do you know the reason? Because more than 30% employees in Microsoft are Indian. So why doesnt Microsoft shift their head-quarter from Redmond to India.

I care about the company. I want to be successful in my startup and if not I will learn something from failure. I may come back if the company respects its people in the trenches. May be Microsoft will buy my startup and I return as a GM or VP. I wrote my rant so that the colleagues I am leaving behind can keep working on improving this company.

BVV- So your motivation for your startup is to be bought by Microsoft. How will you achieve this? Do you really want to work on some cool stuffs or you will just do some networking with your CVP/GM buddies in FB?

I feel really sorry for the Microsoft employees on this thread who think they are hot s**t. If they are as good as they think they are, why are they working at MSFT? Microsoft stopped being a cool (and career advancing) javascript:void(0)company to work for ten years ago.

It seems the chief talent among softies these days is deeming their peers worthy of dismissal.

>>BVV: Exactly how big did your office have to be to contain your gargantuan ego? Good luck, buddy.

This is the first ever I'm posting to Mini-Msft. I certainly didn't write the previous post. Promise :)

I'm earning my bread as honestly as you guys do. I'm just an IC and want to build some stuff on my own. I'm going to do a startup from the little I have and it is going to be a hard phase, and I will try to survive and if possible thrive.

I certainly don't dream of getting bought by MSFT and coming back as GM/VP (thinking of it, doesn't sound like a bad idea ;))

Hopefully, I won't become a routine fixture in MiniMsft from tomorrow.

Once again, I see all these posts alluding to specific managers in specific groups. If you want folks higher up to read this and hear you, without committing career suicide, name some names (dapunk/mini allowing). The guys from Microsoft india do it all the time:)

>>This is the first ever I'm posting to Mini-Msft. I certainly didn't write the previous post. Promise :)-BVV

Actually this is not my post either. If you have seen my post internally, I never sign my name, and that too in capital letter. Somebody is trying to enlarge my ego here. I have posted comments here in the past. But as I said internally this is my last post there and also here too.

Exactly what does everybody hope to achieve with naming names? Everybody makes mistakes, everybody has pluses and minuses. If you have a problem with someone, tell them to their face, vote with your feet, or stfu.

All you do by posting that crap here is to make the entire company look like a bunch of whiny brats, and significantly devalue this forum.

No manager or HR partner is going to read the comments and say "oh, wow, very insightful and specific information that I can use in my next review or 1-1 with so-and-so." This isn't middle school, for crying out loud.

How about instead we use this forum to comment on the strategic value/impact of the layoffs, what we think it means for the company and our jobs, and maybe share some information on which groups had cuts, which groups have potential new roles, and some positive advice for those who were laid off?

If this blog has really become the uncensored (mostly) voice of current and formers softies, then why not call out those managers here?

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My guess is that many of the people who have worked for one of these bad managers have tried to report them. Unfortunately, HR does nothing about it and then the person that reported them is targeted. Worse, that manager may have been hand picked by the GM level manager and the GM in this case would never admit they picked a bad choice and side with the bad manager.

At Microsoft, there is no process to root out bad managers except for manager feedback and the MSPOLL. I am not sure how bad the criteria has to get for a manager to get investigated or fired.

There are a lot more factors involved than just the ones above.

Like others, my manager is both incompetent and intentionally harmful. A lot of other people have been hurt by this person to. I have escalated the issue but it has gone nowhere and none of her management up the chain cares to do anything about it. I am either going to leave the team or leave the company.

In a just world, Steve Ballmer would recognize these 5,000+ layoffs are a consequence of his grow at all costs strategy and the undisciplined hiring and spending culture that developed under his leadership, and he would do the right thing and resign.

As Microsoft's competitors continue to make in roads, this will become more and more clear, and further headcount reductions will be a question of when, not if.

>>Pretty much everyone in engineering above L3 (with a few exceptions) within MSN / Bing could be axed and it would be a net positive for Microsoft. There is a fair amount of deadwood in L3 engineering and below but a lot of talented people as well. Likewise there are a lot of good people on the content & publishing side who are shackled by the lack of vision at L1 and higher.

The biggest problem within MSN / OSD is that senior leadership can't pick a strategy and stick to it - it's a total waffle-fest.

I work there (MSN), and this comment is pretty much spot on. We do have great ICs and interestingly, we're just starting to see some attrition of these folks.

The ludicrous Trio system's vast appetite for communication relegates many L3s and all of the L2s to meeting-bound passers-on of status.

Everything must be done by concensus, we're totally reactive and utterly lacking in actionable strategic leadership from above. It's the epitomy of the "kiss up kick down" organization - management is predominantly focused in the upward direction ("Everything's lovely - all indicators are green!!"), while on the ground its a constant mad panic to make reality align with the status given to the senior leaders.

Bing seems quite separate and aloof by design. They did something previously unheard of in MSN - they *planned* before they executed. Since its activity and not results that get rewarded in MSN, that's going to be a hard culture to change.

To be fair, its not all bad. the views from Braverns 1 & 2 are breathtaking, and the home page looks way better, even if it did take 10 years to get there.

>>We (amazon) has just got alot of resumes. some of these are still FTE and were not laid off, is there a wave 4?

No - the truth is that the bloom is off the rose for Microsoft, and even in this economy, folks are starting to jusmp ship. When things really start to pick up, its going to become much easier to get that window office. Microsoft used to be a special place to work, but that quality, already in decline, was resoundingly killed off by this year's layoffs.

"Best line in Don Dodge's blog entry: My email at Microsoft will go dark in a day or two, so my new contact is DonaldDodge@gmail.com.

Gmail. Brought a huge grin to my face!"

I thought it actually detracted greatly from an otherwise classy goodbye. It was a cheap shot at the company, and called into question his conviction in what he was promoting as recently as the day prior.

Exactly what does everybody hope to achieve with naming names? Everybody makes mistakes, everybody has pluses and minuses. If you have a problem with someone, tell them to their face, vote with your feet, or stfu.

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useless comments, its a public forum you can disagree but you can not sway the mob away from a politically corrupt system.

>Since its activity and not results that get rewarded in MSN, that's going to be a hard culture to change

Sorry to nitpick. You have an extra 'N' here. It should have been "Since its activity and not results that get rewarded in MS," :-)

This might have been ok when we didn't have a real competitor back in the 90s. But whoever figured out how to work this system are now on top and they will absolutely oppose any effort to change this system.

So, if you get laid off, you get a severance package. But, if you are "fired for cause" ... that is, too many reviews, etc. at 10%, or, don't live up to a performance plan, or ??? then you get ZERO severance? And, what about medical insurance? Does that get cut off immediately in either layoff or fire situation? How long does Cobra last? How much does Cobra cost? Thanks much all, in advance.

I thought it actually detracted greatly from an otherwise classy goodbye. It was a cheap shot at the company, and called into question his conviction in what he was promoting as recently as the day prior.

Hotmail is an eyesore, it's unreliable, its spam filter is horrible, and it just started doing POP3 when GMail has been doing IMAP since 2007. I mean, come on. Do you think any technical person will take you seriously if you have a Hotmail address?

Disclaimer

These are sole individual personal points-of-view and the posts and comments by the participants in no way represent the official point-of-view of Microsoft or any other organization. This is a discussion to foster debate and by no means an enactment of policy-violation. These posts are provided "as-is" with no warranties and confer no rights. So chill. And think.